IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cpp/issued/v41y2015is1p64-79.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Portability of New Immigrants' Human Capital: Language, Education, and Occupational Skills

Author

Listed:
  • Casey Warman
  • Arthur Sweetman
  • Gustave Goldmann

Abstract

Given the declining returns to pre-migration labour market experience, human capital portability is explored for new immigrants focusing on pre- and post-immigration occupational matching, and its interactions with education and language. New immigrants who match occupations obtain an earnings premium, but surprisingly, on average, even they obtain no return to their pre-migration labour market experience. Only males with substantial English proficiency who also match occupations receive any return to such experience. Moreover, occupational matching and English skills are also seen to interact with education in an unexpected way. For both sexes, only those with a match and/or strong English proficiency obtain a positive return to their schooling. The commonly observed low rate of return to education for new immigrants appears to be a combination of zero for some and a large return for others. Of the varieties of human capital studied, only English language skills are universally rewarded.

Suggested Citation

  • Casey Warman & Arthur Sweetman & Gustave Goldmann, 2015. "The Portability of New Immigrants' Human Capital: Language, Education, and Occupational Skills," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 41(s1), pages 64-79, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpp:issued:v:41:y:2015:i:s1:p:64-79
    DOI: 10.3138/cpp.2013-055
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/cpp.2013-055
    Download Restriction: access restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.3138/cpp.2013-055?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kai Ingwersen & Stephan L. Thomsen, 2021. "The immigrant-native wage gap in Germany revisited," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 19(4), pages 825-854, December.
    2. Basak Yanar & Agnieszka Kosny & Peter M. Smith, 2018. "Occupational Health and Safety Vulnerability of Recent Immigrants and Refugees," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-16, September.
    3. Casey Warman & Christopher Worswick, 2015. "Technological change, occupational tasks and declining immigrant outcomes: Implications for earnings and income inequality in Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 48(2), pages 736-772, May.
    4. Anthony Edo & Lionel Ragot & Hillel Rapoport & Sulin Sardoschau & Andreas Steinmayr & Arthur Sweetman, 2020. "An introduction to the economics of immigration in OECD countries," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(4), pages 1365-1403, November.
    5. Yigit Aydede & Atul Dar, 2017. "Is the lower return to immigrants’ foreign schooling a postarrival problem in Canada?," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 6(1), pages 1-25, December.
    6. Parisa Ghasemi & Paulino Teixeira & Carlos Carreira, 2024. "Immigrants and the Portuguese labor market: Threat or Advantage?," CeBER Working Papers 2024-02, Centre for Business and Economics Research (CeBER), University of Coimbra.
    7. Susumu Imai & Derek Stacey & Casey Warman, 2019. "From engineer to taxi driver? Language proficiency and the occupational skills of immigrants," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 52(3), pages 914-953, August.
    8. Agnieszka Kosny & Basak Yanar & Momtaz Begum & Dina Al-khooly & Stephanie Premji & Morgan A. Lay & Peter M. Smith, 2020. "Safe Employment Integration of Recent Immigrants and Refugees," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 807-827, September.
    9. Fang, Tony & Zhang, Tingting & Hartley, John, 2023. "Examining the Determinants of Managers' Hiring Attitudes Towards Immigrant Workers: Evidence from an Employer Survey," IZA Discussion Papers 16219, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Randall Akee & Maggie R. Jones, 2019. "Foreign vs. U.S. Graduate Degrees: The Impact on Earnings Assimilation and Return Migration for the Foreign Born," Working Papers 19-17, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    11. Umut Riza Ozkan, 2018. "Foreign Qualification Recognition Regimes for Internationally Trained Professionals: the Case of Pharmacists," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 367-389, May.
    12. Richard E. Mueller & N. T. Khuong Truong, 2022. "Wage and basic skills inequality between immigrants by immigration admission categories and Canadian non-immigrants," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 62(4), pages 1833-1884, April.
    13. Mariele Macaluso, 2022. "The influence of skill-based policies on the immigrant selection process," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 39(2), pages 595-621, July.
    14. Xiaomin Liu & Steven J. Bowe & Allison Milner & Lin Li & Lay San Too & Anthony D. LaMontagne, 2019. "Job Insecurity: A Comparative Analysis between Migrant and Native Workers in Australia," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(21), pages 1-14, October.
    15. Yigit Aydede & Atul Dar, 2016. "The cost of immigrants’ occupational mismatch and the effectiveness of postarrival policies in Canada," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-23, December.
    16. Richard E. Mueller, 2019. "Public Sector Wages In Alberta: How Do These Compare To Other Provinces And To The Private Sector?," SPP Research Papers, The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, vol. 12(34), October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpp:issued:v:41:y:2015:i:s1:p:64-79. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Iver Chong (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.utpjournals.press/loi/cpp .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.